 This time, on Partners, it's tribal natural resources, from bison research that promises to deliver selenium-rich meat, to local residents relearning the power of prairie plants, to an inspiring outreach program that mixes youth and horses. Tribal colleges and neighboring land-grant universities are working together to meet the challenges of the Great Plains. Welcome to Partners. In the next half hour, we'll travel the nation and see breakthrough work in research, education, and extension. That's what CSR EES is all about, helping universities generate valuable knowledge for those who need it, and educating our next generation of Americans. And now, it's time for Partners. For centuries, Native Americans have solved problems, debated issues, and come to consensus by using the talking circle. It allows individuals within a group to speak their mind without interruption for as long as they feel is needed. The speaker is assured that his or her viewpoint will be heard in its entirety, and listening is key to its success. In 2001, the Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service of USDA funded a unique collaborative group consisting of four tribal colleges and four land-grant universities from the Great Plains. Working together, they decided to improve tribal natural resources and natural resources education in Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The talking circle was used by the group to determine the goals of this ambitious project. Students, faculty, farmers, ranchers, spiritual leaders, elders, and natural resource professionals all spoke their minds. Those opinions shaped the actions the group would take during the next five years on the Joint Natural Resource Education Project. Here is their story. What it means is great spirit, dog. When our tribe first saw the horse running across the prairie and never seen this before, they of course had very limited vocabulary. And so all they could think of was it had four legs like a dog. So the first guy you see in him runs back to the tribe, the crier or whatever, and you know, I've seen something amazing. I don't know what it was, but it was waka. And waka to us is the ultimate. So to add that word to the dog, it was describing a dog that you just won't believe. This thing is magical, and they knew that from the second that they laid their eyes on that animal. And it nearly became some of the best horse people in the entire world. Today, it's in the spirit of these kids. They're born with it. I was born with it. Lisa Kallom is the director of Sintegh Galeshka University's ranch. Here, local youth learn how to ride, do ranch chores, and take care of the horses. Beyond horsemanship, Lisa sees this as an opportunity for the kids to connect with their rich cultural heritage and to the land. Within each Indian person, it's a spiritual thing. It's born with any. Once you're actually out here and you're on the horse, it's a spiritual connection that takes you to the land itself that actually makes you look around and realize that the earth grows plants and that the animals need that to survive. We have open enrollment between 12 and 15 kids every four weeks. And they come to the program every day after school. Our university vans pick the kids up from the schools, deliver them out here to the university's ranch. And we really try and instill a lot of respect for the land, a lot of respect for mother nature and try and bring those principles back into their daily lives where they're caring for animals, they're being responsible. This program isn't for every kid as of ballet or piano is not for every kid. But I guarantee you, nine out of ten kids that come out here end up staying through one of our programs. One person that completed the program is Savannah Cook. In addition to having become a competitive barrel racer, Savannah now works as a volunteer at the ranch. They taught me how to barrel race and how to ride the horse right and how not to act when you're around a horse. She helps with the kids mainly by just being there. She's really become a good mentor. She's really fun because you know something they don't want. So it makes you feel like all older and stuff. It's fun. It's always something to do. You're never bored. And it doesn't matter whether you're riding the horse or not, you're always learning something. When you're running like that, it's like a rush. You feel like you're flying and when you're done, your horse is like all happy and then you're proud of your horse and then your horse just shows you love. We all, not only children but adults, you know, we are under extreme social crises many days of our lives. It's an emotional thing. You know, the kids, they come here and they're venting. They've got a lot on their minds. Just little issues within yourself you're insecure about or you feel bad because maybe a family member is away. I think that it just gives them security within themselves. It's somewhere where they're spiritually free. Everybody loves the grooming part of it and I think that's an important connection with the animal and it's a respect level that's created within you and your horse before you even get on the horse. They do any of the painting that we need on the ranch, low maintenance, putting boards up here and there, hanging a hook, picking up trash. And so they really look after each other. It's shared by everybody. Everybody owns it when the kids show up and say, you know, whose horse is this one? It's your guys. It's everybody's. It's the communities. That's what we want to educate. Education is our largest tool here on the reservation. Over the last four or five years, it's been a struggle and we are tribal institutions so we do not have a lot of capital to maintain and to keep things going. We do our best. If it wasn't for the Natural Resource Education Project and the extra funding that came in in order to make some of these extension education projects possible, you know, we might have fell by the wayside. We have a real sustainable program here and we have something that many different kids have participated in. Iowa State University provides leadership for the Natural Resource Education Project, the only USDA initiative for future agriculture and food systems program that combines 1994 tribal colleges and 1862 land grant universities. It's a big garden. It takes a lot of people to work it. We've had 15 different people come and work on it. Hank Miller is the Natural Resources Director at Nebraska Indian Community College. Hank and others have established this 10-acre garden near Santee, Nebraska as part of the Natural Resources Education Grant. The goals of this effort are to produce food for needy community members, serve as an outdoor lab for community college students, and reconnect residents to traditional plants. The native people of this area have a long tradition of using the land to produce food. A lot of the elders are really worried about losing those skills. What we're trying to do with the community garden right now is use technology in a good ecological way that works with the old ways and try to reinstill that interest again. I think the average wage in Santee is about 8,000 a year. So I feel that part of my job is trying to help teach people how to raise healthy food. What we want to do is we want other people doing what we're doing. Not necessarily as big, but doing it for themselves. And what we're trying to do is create food for the elderly, the poor, whoever really needs it. And it's the Indian way. The other thing that's kind of neat, we've had the white culture and the Indian culture both come together and work on this together. And the communication relationships, I think that's even getting better. I like that and I think this can be a real good example about how we could all work together. We hope that students or other interested people within the reservation, after we get the marketing established, that they become excited and want to do it for themselves too. So we're trying to create opportunities as well as increase the food supply. Another grant project is the Sinte Galeshka University's Native Herb Garden on the Rosebud Reservation. The emphasis here is to reconnect the residents with their rich medicinal plant heritage. This is the Mullen plant and it can be used as an analgesic, a painkiller, and it's widely used for chest complaints such as bronchitis. Erin Blackfeather is a Sinte Galeshka University intern at the garden. Which means they expel gas. Eight. Okay, eight. Erin and others know the importance of this effort. Since many of these prairie plants are over harvested, the garden serves to protect the species locally. It also acts as a hands-on training ground for students. We're growing all types of mints, different types of sage, Mullen, fennel, bee balm. Because the ones that are growing, you know, out in the fields naturally, they're being over harvested by people who come in from, you know, out of town. So yeah, this would be a great project to restore them. You can make teas out of these plants and drink it or else it can be applied to your body, the tea. You can grind it up and combine it with other stuff like olive oil that will be like a lotion. It's really great to take care of plants and watch them grow and learn of their different uses and their habitats. I learned better when something's right in front of me, you know, and I can make a medicine or create like a salve or something. And whereas in class, you know, it's kind of hard for me to absorb all the information when I'm reading it, but I'll remember it better, you know, when it's hands-on. In addition to providing educational opportunities, Sioux traditions are also being practiced here at the Rosebud Reservation herb garden. We offer the tobacco and it's a sign of respect towards the plant because we have to give something since we're taking part of the plant. Anybody who's interested in coming out here and learning about the plants is going to find out how they're used and what they can be used for. To get the word out to more people, Sinte Galeshka University started Herbs Why Herbs. The series ran consecutive weeks in the local newspaper. We served Todd County and the Rosebud Reservation. We had a lot of people comment that they liked it, a lot of the ranchers, the farmers, and a lot of native people, they also liked it. Being a native myself, we were nomads and relied on herbs to keep us healthy, feed us, and so I thought it was a really great idea. People read it, people liked it. Another natural resource project at the university is focused on sage, a plant that is decreasing rapidly on the Rosebud Reservation. Project scientists have collected plant samples and are conducting propagation trials with future plans to reintroduce sage on tribal lands. The sage project came about because of the collaboration that was formed through the Natural Resources Education Project. Our colleagues at Sinte Galeshka University had needs and ideas and we will have trials here on the reservation. We'll also have a set of trials at South Dakota State University and Iowa State University so the NRE I think in this project has been a catalyst. Back in Nebraska, Hank Miller also collaborates with other partners such as the University of Nebraska on prairie and riparian woodland restoration. In a hundred years, Nebraska has lost over 80% of their native tallgrass prairie. Now the group is taking cropland that erodes easily like this cornfield and converting it to profitable prairie. Fields are plowed, holes are dug, the planting crew goes to work, plants are watered. Eventually, fields like this will nurture young saplings and other native plants. We want to create opportunity and economic viability. So within this prairie restoration, we did these woody florals which are dogwoods and willows and different types and we can harvest those and sell them to the florist market. We're doing seed collection on wildfires. We're trying to create our own package, our own marketing of wildfire seed from each reservation. The networking and the relationships and the bonds that have been formed have been incredible. Incredible personally for me but also for me to do my job. I've got a question I can call any one of those people involved in that grant and it's there. You know, and tribal colleges, we don't have a huge budget. So the help of these 1862s are immense and people are so willing. And if we're willing to work together, we can be better at the end than more separate. And I think this program that we've had shows that immensely. Talking Circle participants identified these four natural resource areas as points of focus for the project. For centuries, Bison have roamed the vast landscape of the Great Plains. Known as Tatanka by the Sioux, tribes here depended on this robust animal for food, clothing and shelter. The Plains Indians led a nomadic life following the herds throughout the ever changing seasons. Today Bison are still greatly valued by Native Americans. In fact, Sitting Bull College, Sinti Galeshka University and Fort Berthold Community College have partnered with North Dakota State University in a unique research project centered on this great animal of the prairie. In this study, we initially wanted to look at what the selenium potential is from the soil and the vegetation. So what we did is came out here and collected the soil on five different Bison herd pastures and looked at the soil and vegetation. Selenium is a natural mineral found in prairie grasses. It has strong anti-cancer properties. The project's goal is to find out which grasses are high in selenium, raise the herds on this mineral-rich feed and then market Bison meat as a value-added health product. Natural selenium, this high selenium protein complex can reduce colon cancers by as much as 60 percent and other cancers 20 to 60 percent. So it's great marketing potential. I think if you can create a niche market with it, the potential to provide a high end product, that's healthy. Not only healthy for the Native Americans, but also healthy for the general public is a great thing to look at. What you find with a natural selenium, whether you seed it in a meat product or in a grain product, is it gives you the proper selenium protein complex that gives you the most powerful anoxin or selenium in the diet that gives you the biggest benefit in terms of anti-carcinogen. We knew we had high selenium potential in this region along the tribal lands. I thought it would be a natural fit for the tribes to look at for some economic development. The high selenium product that we created here really comes from the soil. It is that parent material that is created from the cretaceous shale, which is a rock that is broken down to create soil. We actually brought in the Bison herds and selected 12 animals and looked at the selenium content in the hair and in the blood to see, are we getting that selenium from the plant to the animal? Once the samples were gathered on reservation lands, they were transported to the labs at North Dakota State University. Kevin and his team ran the samples through a spectrophotometer to determine selenium content. By correlating which grasses the animal grazed on, data would reveal the optimum plants for raising Bison with selenium rich meat. The reason we looked at the hair was there was some initial research that showed there was a great correlation between hair and meat. And so we looked at the hair because it gave us the potential to say, yes, this tribal herd will have a high smart up potential and this one will not. What was interesting was out of the five different pastures we've looked at, there's a difference among pastures. Some pastures seem to have a high level of selenium. Some seem to have very, very normal levels of selenium. Some of the tribes will have potential to create a niche market. Others will not because of what they have for initial parent material. And our next step is to look at, are we getting selenium in the muscle tissue? Once the research is complete, the tribal colleges and North Dakota State University will turn their attention to getting the value added product to the consumer. We'll go through the next year to see the marketability and what kind of return they can get from having this high niche market selenium Bison meat. Upon completion of the Natural Resource Education Grant in 2006, student internships will continue between the project's tribal colleges and state land grant universities. Juneberries are special because of their link to the past. They were used extensively by all the tribes on the Northern Great Plains. They're one of the many plants that there's a great interest in revitalizing because of their healthful benefits and their cultural applications. Harry Hartman is on the science faculty at Fort Berthold Community College. Working with North Dakota State University, he and community members from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Erika nations have been trying to reestablish this plant that at one time provided important nutrition for local residents. The actual impetus for the Juneberries came from the talking circles that were held for the NRE grant. They were mentioned repeatedly by elders, by practitioners and by educators. Hartman, a graduate of South Dakota State's Prairie PhD program, is now putting his natural resources knowledge to work. He and his team are trying to determine the ideal conditions for growing Juneberries. At a 500 tree test plot at Fort Berthold, and here at this community garden at White Shields, the plant is being put to the test. Samples are taken to determine which soil provides optimum growth. Various types of plastic used to retard weeds are being evaluated. Some plants are fed by drip irrigation, others rely on weather's precipitation. Three different cultivars are also being tested. We purchased one-inch pot seedlings from the only supplier in the Northern Plains area, and we're going to try and correlate all of those factors to find out what's the best conditions for reestablishing Juneberries for the tribal members who'd like to have a plot. The hope is that Juneberries will again become an important part of daily life, as one Fort Berthold elder expressed during a talking circle session. Our home had apple trees, crab apple trees, a big strawberry patch, and plum trees. Now they are all gone. But the road back to that kind of life is one that will take patience and determination, especially with Juneberries. We're hoping lots more for the future, when we actually can harvest. Juneberries don't yield for four to six years, and when that is happening, we foresee elders and youth harvesting together, preserving together. So this is a long-term plan. We're planning on being here for five to ten years minimum. I believe that having the four tribal colleges and the other four mainstream colleges and universities as partners within the NRE program has been very beneficial. So that's been very important to us. It provided us expertise, and especially the tribal colleges, because they are so similar to our college. Taking a look at what is making them work and what is not working, we can really learn from each other. So having that partnership was very beneficial. From water quality studies at Sitting Bull College, to the youth and horses program at Sintegh Galeshka University, from the gardens of Nebraska Indian Community College to bison research at Fort Berthold Community College, the Natural Resource Education Grant has brought together the talents from tribal colleges and neighboring land grant universities, and their cooperative efforts will help build a sustainable future on tribal lands of the Great Plains for years to come. On the next edition, partners presents Protecting the Homeland. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, America's land grant universities went to work. From Eden, the Extension Disaster Education Network, distributing vital information to Mississippi residents. To new storm and flood resistant housing solutions in Louisiana. Welcome to La House, our showcase of solutions for the Gulf Coast home. That's Protecting the Homeland, next time on Partners. For more information on tribal natural resources and other partners' episodes, log on to this website.